


The Thing That Happened After Practice

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-24
Updated: 2012-07-24
Packaged: 2017-11-10 15:01:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/467601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Lena who prompted me when i complained about a writer's block.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thing That Happened After Practice

Sometimes, when he wasn’t working, Scott would go out to the lacrosse field, dump his backpack in the bleachers, and breathe the green grass. Sometimes, he’d take off his shoes and socks and just wriggle his toes in the green grass, until the skin was stained green.

Sometimes he wishes he could be on first line but truth, god’s honest truth even though Scott hasn’t been to church in years—

sometimes the thrumming energy of the fans, every heart beat thumping with their team, every voice screaming, every foot stamping and hand clapping—

Sometimes it was enough and if he sometimes needed his inhaler that was okay too.

Besides, Stiles would always be there with him. In the game together, off the game together, in this together.

He smiles because Stiles would push his shoulder like that if he ever really heard Scott saying something like that to his face—what did you do? replace your words with 100% processed squares of velveeta cheese that comes in those individual packets?—but his eyes would be soft.

Stiles was a good friend.

Still he wasn’t expecting for someone else to be on the field. It was Danny, one of the first line players, casually tossing a ball with his stick, jogging casually after it, casually scooping it up with his net, and so on and so forth.

Scott pauses, not caring that his heavy backpack digs into his shoulder because if there was one thing about Danny was that he was one of their most graceful players, lithe, like he was a cat, slipping between the players like they were just shadows and he was water sliding between them.

Which wasn’t to say that he couldn’t tackle because he had seen Danny tackle someone, had heard the impact all the way on the bench, and had cringed right along with everyone else but Danny had stopped the other team from scoring and it had been awesome.

“Hey, Scott,” Danny says. 

“Hey,” Scott says back, then smiles because Danny’s nice and he’s smiling too.

Danny gestures to Scott’s stick. “Wanna join? Toss it back and forth with me?”

Scott licks his lips, flushing a little, because when they practice, Danny always tosses a ball or two to him. Scott knows he’s not anyone special or anything, because he’s seen him toss it to Stiles too, but it’s nice when it happens, because there is that moment when the ball sails towards him, when he manages to catch it in the net, that he feels like he’s part of the team, even if it’s just practice and the only reason there are two teams is because they’re wearing different colored jerseys. 

Not that they’re wearing jerseys now since Danny’s taking his off, and his muscles are shiny with sweat and Scott can see the muscles in his arms coil and flex as he scoops up the ball from the grass.

“Well, do you?” Danny says again, smiling a little, and Scott realizes that he’s been staring with his mouth hanging open a little, so he just lets it fall into a smile, and says –

“Sure.”

His backpack thunks to the ground and he cringes, hopes he didn’t bend the almost-already falling apart paperpack text books, spines held together with ductape, and just jogs down to the field, gripping his stick, and then Danny’s passing to him, and he almost catches the ball in his net, but he doesn’t quite, so he just chases after the ball bumping its way through the green grass, before scooping it up, tossing it back, letting his eyes slide across Danny’s face, to see if he’s laughing or smirking but he’s not, he’s just waiting, and he catches Scott’s ball so neatly that his stomach flips to see it, to see his body bending forwards to meet that small white ball, stick just as much a part of him as his arms and his leg and his everything basically.

Danny pitches it back to Scott, and he can tell that it’s a slower ball, more directly aimed at him, and Scott holds out his crosse, and the ball sinks into the net with a small whoosh, and Scott smiles because hey, he caught the ball, isn’t that just great it really is, and Danny must think so too because he’s grinning, gives him a thumbs up, says, “Nice,” with an almost chuckle.

They set up a rhythm, Scott catching most of them, and Danny catching all of his, until the sun goes lower beyond the horizon, and Danny’s shorts are a slipping down his waist, his hip bones peeking over the elastic, and Scott has to focus on the ball, to catch it, and it’s only when he finds himself lunging after it, heart beating and his blood pounding through his limbs, that he realizes that this is harder, that it’s not so relaxed anymore, that they’ve been running across the field together, pitching and tossing, that Danny’s not throwing to him anymore but for him—

And the realization is so stunning that Scott goes in for it too early, too far, and he misses the ball, and Danny’s watching him gaze from the ball to his face and back again. But Danny just wipes his forehead with his wrist, not even realizing that Scott is having an epiphany here, a but why would you do that moment because he’s too busy saying something about how “--your form is pretty good, Scott.”

“What?”

Danny claps him on the shoulder as he walks by to scoop up the ball. “Your form. It’s good. It just needs some honing. And maybe not quite so belligerent a coach.” And he huffs out laughter that’s not mean, but it’s pitched low like disappointment.

Scott shrugs. “Well, you know—“ but then stops, hears the distant  _jingle of row, row, row your boat_ , so he reaches out for Danny, but not far enough to touch– “it’s the ice cream truck.”

Danny says, “You want some?”

And Scott nods because who the heck doesn’t want ice cream? They leave their gear on the field, hail down the truck and ignore the incessant tune jangling on as they look over the goods, until, when they pick out what they want (a dipped icecream cone for Danny, a tollhouse cookie dough sandwich for Scott), they realize that they’ve left their wallets with their clothes, and so they rifle in their pockets for loose change, but it’s hardly enough to buy anything more than a cold bottle of coke, even with the icecream truck driver rolling his eyes and just saying go, go on, take it – it’s not like he really needs to charge a whole dollar seventy-five for a single bottle of coke—

They thank him profusely, wander back together and sit close on the bleachers, the bottle between them with two plastic straws. “This is good,” Scott says, dipping his head, the carbonation burning down his throat into his belly.

“It’s really nice,” Danny says. His knee bumps into Scott’s, but Scott doesn’t move his leg and so Danny lets his rest against Scott’s, warm and close. “Not just the drink either.”

Scott flushes, smiles.

“We should do it again sometime,” Danny says. “Maybe have dinner and a movie after.” He catches Scott’s eye, and says, “What do you think?”

“I think it sounds like a date,” Scott says.

Danny nods, takes a sip of coke as he does so. 

“Then I think it also sounds great.” Scott bites his lips, cold from the coke, shuffles his feet.

“Next Friday then, after school?”

And Scott nods, sticks out his hand to shake on it even though duh that wasn’t the right move to make, how do you even date or accept dates without making it completely awkward, and he can feel his cheeks getting red, but Danny—Danny just takes his hand, squeezes it reassuringly but not bone-crushingly hard,  and says, “See you then.”

And they do and they have fun and at the end of a night with burgers and more coke (this time with icecream in it to make up for the lack of cold sweet stuff the first time) and, at the end of the night, Danny says, “I’m going to hug you now, if that’s okay—“

And Scott says that yeah, it is, and they hug, and it’s such a good, warm, solid hug that he can’t stop blushing, not when Danny turns to wave goodbye, not when Mom asks him how it went and the only words he can push out of his mouth are “great” and “awesome” and “best” strung incoherently together, not even when he stretches out on his covers at night, hands clasped behind his head, eyes up on the ceiling, waiting to fall asleep because the whole day had been great and Danny had been great and gosh—

Just everything and everyone was really, really good.


End file.
